


A Half-Forgotten Song

by OwenToDawn



Series: Touch Starved [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), platonic intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: When was the last time he touched someone when it wasn’t out of pure necessity? Surely not…his mother? Before he even came to Fódlan?
Relationships: Leonie Pinelli & Claude von Riegan
Series: Touch Starved [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915453
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	A Half-Forgotten Song

**Author's Note:**

> My touch-starved series continues with platonic cuddling! I feel like the Leonie/Claude friendship is underrated and deserves more love so here we are. 
> 
> Title from Touch by Daft Punk
> 
> Comments are loved!

The first time it happens is after the shit show that is the destruction of Remire Village. Claude enters the gates of Garreg Mach and for the first time since he steeled himself when he crossed Fódlan’s Throat, he feels something deep inside him give out. The thought of taking one more single step grates on his insides and leaves him raw. His classmates file past, too lost in their own thoughts to notice his sudden halt. He can’t blame them, but it bothers him anyways, the way he can be so easily ignored when it’s convenient.

“Hey.”

Knuckles press into his back, grinding and hard. He straightens on reflex, taking a step forward before his knees wobble again, but there’s already a firm arm wrapped around his waist, holding him up with a casual camaraderie that anyone who glanced at them wouldn’t think twice about. When he looks over, it’s Leonie with her arm wrapped around him. She smiles, though it looks as tired as he feels.

“Can’t let anyone see our fearless leader like this, huh?” she asks.

"Thanks,” he says, because words feel much too far away right now to manage something more eloquent.

She keeps her arm around him as they continue on their way and he leans into her steady weight, too grateful for the help to protest. She walks him right up the stairs to his dorm too, ignoring the disgruntled look Lorenz gives them both in favor of calling ahead to Hilda that she’ll stop by her room in a bit. They enter Claude’s and once he’s steady on his own feet, she expects her to leave. But she doesn’t. Instead she shuts the door and pulls off his cloak and then starts working on his outer coat.

“Hey what-“

“Shoes off, of you’ll track mud all over your room,” she says.

Claude obeys, too stunned to resist her commands as he unlaces them and pushes them off his feet. She gathers those into her arms too with his outer coat and then looks pointedly at his mud-soaked pants. He’s too past the point of caring and he tugs those off too without any fanfare, handing them over and standing in front of her in a plain shirt and his under things, fully prepared to get entirely naked if she deems it necessary.

"Everything else looks clean,” she says with a nod. “I’ll throw these in with my junk to clean tomorrow, okay? And you can pay me back by buying me something fancy for breakfast.”

“Deal,” he says, and even just the one word feels like it took too much effort.

“Get some rest,” she says.

She’s gone before he can respond and he all but collapses into his bed, pulling his covers up high as if that will somehow keep out the soaking chill of what they’d all witnessed.

-.-

The second time it happens, Claude is on the verge of sleep staring down at yet another dull and sanitized version of Fódlan’s history. Seteth really did make sure nothing remotely interesting landed on the library shelves and it was starting to drive him a little bit crazy. A fist drives against his back, hard and firm, but not violent. When he looks up, leaning back as he does so, he finds Leonie grinning down at him. She wiggles her hand free from between his back and the chair and then shifts to sit on the table next to his books, legs swinging.

"You look bored,” Leonie says. “Wanna study with me?”

“Sure, there’s space.”

Leonie shakes her head and then points to one of the window benches piled high with cushions. “Join me over there.”

From anyone else, he might have been suspicious, but Leonie has never been anything other than what exactly she’s shown him and everyone else. He shuts the book and pushes it aside, following her to the window bench as she pulls her materials out of her side bag. By the looks of the cover, it’s tactics. He’s not sure why she needs his help – she’s as good as he is most of the time. If things were different-

“Well come on then,” she says, patting her lap.

“What?”

She rolls her eyes and grabs his arm to tug him down, man-handling him with the ease of a warrior who spends too much time on the train grounds until he’s cushioned with his back to her front, head braced along her collarbone. With a satisfied noise, she puts her arms over his shoulders and opens her textbook, the bottom of the spine digging into his sternum and at the perfect height for him to see the diagram inside. She launches into a long-winded question, but his mind reels so much from the sudden closeness, the casual way she just loops her arms over him, embraces him, that he can’t even begin to process her words.

When _was_ the last time he touched someone when it wasn’t out of pure necessity? Surely not…his mother? Before he even came to Fódlan?

A choked noise escapes him, something adjacent to a sob maybe, and he shudders when he feels tears burning at the corners of his eyes. He feels Leonie go stiff behind him as her voice goes quiet. It doesn’t matter though, not when he’s already hurling himself away from her, nearly tripping over his own feet as he flees out of the library. It’s not the first time he’s run away from something and he’s certain it won’t be the last.

-.-

The third time…the third time he knows what it is because he has a pattern now. He opens his dorm room door a week after the library incident to see Leonie standing there with a tray full of food from the dining hall and he recognizes the action for what it is. Bribery. An attempt to get close. She wants something from him and he doesn’t know what, but he supposes it proves how good she is that he can’t even begin to hazard a guess towards what it is she wants.

"You can just ask. All of this isn’t necessary,” he says.

Leonie raises an eyebrow and shoves her way inside his room, kicking his door shut with her foot before moving over to his desk to set the tray down. “Just ask what?”

He sighs and leans back against the door, folding his arms across his chest. “Whatever it is what you want. Clearly you want something.”

“Yeah, to be your friend,” she says. “I am sorry by the way. I obviously made you uncomfortable and I just…I don’t know, most my friends back home and I have never had any issue just being close like that. But still, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Claude narrows his eyes, but there’s nothing about her that makes it seem like she’s lying. “You really don’t want anything from me?”

“I mean, I guess if you want to pay off all my debt that would be great, but honestly that’d just make me feel worse,” she says with a shrug. “I’d rather work it off myself.” Her somewhat irritated expression softens and she leans against his desk chair. “I can go though. I’ve clearly made you upset.”

“It’s not that,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just…” Honesty. He could do honesty. He could at least try. “Since I came here, no one has really uh, taken any interest in me like…”

“Like they care?” Leonie lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “Yeah, I noticed. They treat me the same way sometimes, but I imagine the reasons are well…different.”

He swallows past the anxious knot in his throat and coughs. “And I haven’t…in the library-“

“We _really_ don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to. Just say the word, I don’t touch you again, I promise,” she says, a splotchy flush breaking out up her neck and into her cheeks.

“No, I just haven’t hugged anyone since I left Almyra,” he says.

Leonie stares, eyebrows raising. “What? Really? No one?”

“Who would I hug, my grandfather? The man only acknowledged my existence because he didn’t have any other option,” Claude says, surprised by the bitterness he hears in his own tone. He shakes his head, trying to get a lid on himself before he lets something worse spill out of him, something _too_ truthful. “It’s not that I didn’t like it I just…I don’t know, I realized when you hugged me that it’d been a few years. It was hard.”

“Huh.”

Silence stretches between them and Claude can’t help but move from foot to foot, restless and nervous energy rushing through him. Leonie steps forward, motions slow and deliberate. It’s obvious she’s giving him a chance to refuse, but he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t really move into it either, though he does drop his arms to his side so she can step close. Her arms wrap around the middle of his back and she rests her chin on his shoulder. After a moment, he wraps his arms around her as well.

It’s nice. It doesn’t make him feel like he’s going to cry this time at least and as the seconds tick past, it’s easier to relax into her strong grip. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to hug someone or something, he just hasn’t had reason or opportunity to. He realizes as they stand there with their arms wrapped around each other, that Leonie really might be the only person he trusts enough to allow this sort of close contact. She doesn’t want anything from the future Sovereign Duke, or the future King or Empress. She doesn’t want money or favors. He doubts that would change even if she knew the truth of who he was.

“Thanks,” he says after a long moment.

She pulls back and then reaches up to ruffle his hair until he laughs and smacks her hand away. “Of course, boss man. Now enjoy this food with me.”

“You got it.”

-.-

There’s no point in counting after that. It becomes a common thing to find the two of them curled up together in the library as they study, and Claude cherishes the closeness he can have with her. It goes a long way in making him feel like he isn’t alone, even if it doesn’t get rid of the homesickness.

And then Jeralt is murdered.

He finds her by the pond, fishing pole in hand, but it’s likely just to keep people away because it’s clear when he looks for longer than a few seconds that she’s not using it. Not when her shoulders keep shaking from what are likely barely restrained sobs. He takes a deep breath and steps out on the dock, keeping his steps slow and loud so she has the opportunity to get up and leave if she wants, but she stays right where she is even as he sits down beside her. All it takes is him putting an arm around her shoulder for her to throw her pole onto the dock behind them before throwing herself into his arms.

“Hey, it’s alright,” he says, even though it’s not, rubbing her back as she weeps into his neck, fingers curling in the fabric of his uniform.

She cries herself weak against him, the strength in her arms giving out as she collapses into him. He gets to his feet and pulls her up with him, grabbing her fishing pole and guiding her on unsteady legs back to her room with an arm around her waist just as she had done for him. Back in her room, he sets her fishing pole in its place alongside her weapons as she sits on her bed. He kneels before her and helps her out of her shoes, tucking the laces in and putting those in their place near the door as well before returning to her side and helping her stand as she strips out of her uniform.

“Where do you keep your sleeping things?” he asks. Oddly, he doesn’t feel the need to avert his eyes. She’s just Leonie and he’s just Claude. They’re just friends trying to help one another through hard times and there’s nothing sexual about being close to naked in front of each other.

"Top drawer,” she says with a snotty sniff as she wipes the back of her hand against her eyes.

He picks a soft cotton shirt and loose shorts, handing them over to her and then helping when her hands shake too bad. Once she’s dressed, he grabs her tissue box off her desk. He sets it on her pillow before pulling the thick covers back and giving her a pointed look. She offers a weak smile and climbs into bed, letting him pull the covers up around her and after a moment of hesitation, he leans down to kiss her forehead.

“Want me to stay here?” he asks.

"Just ‘til I fall asleep?”

He nods, grabbing one of her books from the small bookshelf she has and taking a seat on the floor next to the top of her bed. Only when he hears her breathing deepen does he shut the book and leave her room.

-.-

The night Garreg Mach falls to the Empire, he and Leonie share a tent. They fled with the rest of the Alliance students and a handful of Knights once the battle turned, running until they were safe enough to set up camp. When he’d stepped into her tent with her, she didn’t question him, only left her sleeping bag open so he could squeeze into it beside her. There’s comfort in feeling another human beside him, feeling the very life of her as she breathes, each inhale and exhale felt against his own chest.

She cups his cheek in her hand, thumb rubbing away bit of dirt, or blood, or who knows what. He closes his eyes and leans forward, pressing their foreheads together. It’s comforting to feel her there, to feel such care and understanding without a single word needing to be spoken. Hours slip away but neither of them sleep, only shifting every once in a while to get comfortable but never pulling away, never leaving one another’s arms for longer than a brief second.

It’s only when they hear the sounds of others stirring in their haphazard camp that she speaks.

“You know I’m going to follow you anywhere, right?” she asks, voice rough from all the yelling during the battle.

“Yeah,” he says. He wraps his arm tight around her, resting his chin on top of her head. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t respond with words. She just holds him closer.


End file.
